Yesterday's Tomorrow
by chocolatebearturk
Summary: Family, motherhood, and a circle that never ends. JONAS, hints of Kacy. For Kendra.


Yesterday's Tomorrow  
potr

_**Dedication—To Kendra, the Room Mom, for always being there. PHM wouldn't exist without you and we may not have found each other without it. So thank you, for being a mother to your own children and all of us here on FF.**_

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The first time she came home from a day of running errands and found the house in contained chaos, it was an instant flashback to childhood. There were drawings on the walls—half-finished, of course, with crayons still broken and scattered on the floor. There were toys _everywhere_, as though they had a fierce and engaging battle that took place all over the house—up to and including the stairs and the bathroom. She had a feeling that if she went into the baby's room, she would see that a baby powder snowstorm took place. And the kitchen—oh, god, don't even get her started on the kitchen.

But what made her pause and catch her breath is what she found on the living room couch.

What made her stop and smile that warm smile that she was sure was on her older cousin's face those ten years ago was an image that almost perfectly reflected the photo that her husband had framed and mounted in his office and carried in his wallet at all times. Annabelle was sound asleep with one arm wrapped around each charge, the baby cuddled against her chest, breathing deeply and evenly, and little Chelsea curled up next to her, snoring ever so lightly.

She dug in her purse to find her camera; or, failing that, at least her cell phone. She wanted to preserve this moment—for herself and for Annabelle and for whoever Annabelle would one day marry and certainly for Kendra. Her fingers closed around the small digital device and she smiled with triumph. Turning it on and fiddling with the controls took longer than finding it did (really, these new cameras just got harder and harder to use), but she finally got everything just right.

_Snap._

(ten years ago)

Macy woke with a start to see that a camera was pointed directly at her. She flushed and moved to hold a hand in front of her face, but found that both arms were occupied. Looking down, she saw that each was wrapped around a little girl, serving the double purpose of keeping them safe and making sure she knew if one of them ran off to cause more damage in the house.

She looked back up at the camera and found that the person behind it was none other than the woman she was supposed to be babysitting for, her older cousin Kendra. Her face, already flushed with her embarrassment, turned a deeper color. She looked helplessly at the brunette and struggled to rise from the couch without waking the children. This proved impossible and she looked up at her cousin, a plea for help in her eyes. Kendra set down the camera, careful of the expensive telephoto lense, and moved to take Annabelle.

The girl's wild light brown curls were matted with chunks of hardened cookie dough and something that looked like flour—only it was finer and smelled almost too sweet. Kendra's eyes widened when she realized that there was baby powder in her oldest's hair. She sent a questioning look at her babysitter, but Macy only blushed further and moved quicker toward the stairs. Ellie's door was closed when Kendra walked by to put Annabelle down for a well-deserved nap, but she saw inside the room as Macy came out and she gasped.

"How am I going to clean this?" she hissed to the teenager, looking around at the baby powder that had dusted everything in the room. "It's… it's _everywhere_."

"I know," Macy said quietly.

"It looks like it even ground into the carpet," Kendra said in a horrified whisper.

"It probably did," said the younger brunette.

Kendra wheeled around to look her in the face. _Now_ Macy knew what the girls had meant when they talked about Mommy's "disappointed face." She pointed at the stairwell and said in a low voice, "Kitchen. Now."

Of course, when she saw the state of the kitchen, it didn't help her mood. There were egg shells smashed on the counter and chocolate chips everywhere, melted onto the cooktops and mashed into the grout between tiles. Dough lay in clumps on every surface and the dishes were piled eyebrow-high in the sink.

"What _happened_?" Kendra whispered.

Macy winced. "Annabelle wanted to make cookies."

"And in the bedroom?"

"Ellie was making it snow," said the girl. She sniffed and rubbed her nose. "I really don't know how it happened. We were outside, they were drawing on the sidewalk, and then…" She raised her hands in the air. "I don't know. There was something about Word Girl and a bunch of Barney toys and Ellie was drawing on the walls and Annabelle was having some kind of war between the Wiggles and the Backyardigans…"

Kendra snorted and covered her mouth with her hand as she stared around the kitchen. "It looks like you had an eventful day."

"You have _no_ idea…" Macy said. She ran a hand through her hair, exposing the powder and flour that she had yet to shake out of her roots. It caused a smile to quirk Kendra's mouth. "I do _not_ remember being that difficult when I was their age."

"Trust me, you were," Kendra said, smiling faintly at the memories. Macy blushed, but said nothing. "This is… this is not going to be easy to clean up."

"I could always talk to Kevin—the boys—about a cleaning service," suggested the younger brunette. Her older cousin's appalled look squelched that idea rather quickly. "Well, I'll help you clean up, then. It's the least I can do after letting them get away from me like that. And—and don't worry about paying me for today. Considering the job I did, I couldn't ask you for _any_ amount of money."

"I'll certainly accept the help," Kendra said. Macy nodded and stared at her feet. "But I can't let you refuse pay. After the day you've had, I can't even think about taking that away." The girl stared up at her in shock. "Besides, I have a feeling that Kevin would want to know why you aren't bragging about how well your first babysitting job went."

Macy gasped and blushed, taking the bottle of dishsoap offered to her. "You are _evil_."

"I'm a mom," Kendra said, laughing at the look on her face. "I have to be."

(present day)

"You know…" Macy said over the vacuum cleaner as she ran a cloth over the bars of the crib, trying to dust away the baby powder. She'd already thrown the sheets in the washer with anything else they could find that wouldn't be destroyed by the high-powered machine. "This really takes me back to when _I_ was a teenager."

Annabelle grinned and shut off her vacuum. "You mean when Ellie made a snowstorm in her bedroom? And you and Mom spent ages just figuring out how to clean up that much baby powder?"

The older woman laughed and finished off the crib with a flourish. "That actually ended up being pretty fun. I mean, it was certainly embarrassing when Kevin came to pick me up and found me covered head-to-toe in the stuff, but me and your mom had a good time cleaning up that room. Oh, and the dishes and finding a way to get the chocolate out of the grout in the kitchen."

"I don't think you actually got much out," Annabelle said. She finished winding up the cord to the vacuum and began to wheel it out of the room. "Because we had an ant problem that summer. You should remember—Mom let you babysit a few times when you weren't gallivanting around the globe."

"Gallivanting?" Macy repeated. "_Someone_ has been studying for the SATs." She followed the younger girl out of the room and used the bobbing head of wild light brown curls to guide her down the hall over the overflowing tub of cleaning supplies. "But I do remember Raid becoming my best friend that summer."

The phone rang when they got to the bottom of the stairs and Macy groaned when she heard the baby start to cry. Motioning to Annabelle to get the phone, she trekked back up the stairs to comfort the cranky child. She came back down with both children in tow, having been woken from their naps. A stern talking-to was in order as soon as Annabelle went home, but for now little Chelsea was free to attack her new "favorite" cousin. The baby, a young Jeremy, was happy to grab at his mother's hair.

"It was my mom," Annabelle said. "She's on her way to pick me up. I told her what happened and she did the strangest thing."

"Oh?" Macy said, hiding a smile.

"She started laughing at me!" said the teenager. Her indignance broke Macy's resolve and she started laughing as well. The young brunette huffed. "I hope I don't get crazy when _I'm_ old."

"Hey! I am _not_ old!" Macy said, still grinning. "And neither is your mother! There's only ten years' difference between you and me. And thirteen years' difference between me and her."

Annabelle rolled her eyes. "I'm _seventeen_, Macy. Anyone older than twenty-five is old."

They settled down to wait for her mother, Annabelle playing some complicated form of Patty-Cake with Chelsea and Macy gently wresting her hair from Jeremy's clutching fingers. Macy'd hardly had time to find the boy a toy to play with before the doorbell rang.

"Kendra!" she said when she opened the door. She smiled at the older woman and pulled her into a hug. "It's so good to see you again. Come on in. Anna's been playing with Chelsea while we waited and I don't think she's quite ready to let her 'favorite' cousin leave yet."

Kendra came inside the door and looked around at the house, spotting the toys that they hadn't managed to put away yet and the freshly scrubbed areas on the wall. A grin spread over her face. "You cleaned up a lot easier this time."

"Yes, well, only _one_ of my kids can walk and Annabelle had her in better control than I could ever manage." Macy said. She led her cousin into the living room and picked up the camera she'd laid on the coffee table. "Oh, I'm glad I remembered to show this to you." She found the image she was looking for and showed it to the older woman.

Kendra stared for a long moment with a hand over her mouth, obviously noting the similarities between it and the one she still had framed on the mantle at home. She laughed and pointed at the knots in Chelsea's hair, remembering the cookie dough that had taken ages to peel out of her oldest's own mane of curls.

"I'm going to get a copy to you as soon as it's printed," Macy said softly, watching the play of emotions on the older woman's face. "It really is amazing—we've got four generations of this cycle here in this house. And it'll probably continue—if Annabelle has kids around the time I did, Chelsea will be just old enough to babysit."

Nodding, Kendra reached in her purse and started digging around. Macy assumed for a tissue, because the woman's eyes were watering, but instead her hand came out clutching an old Polaroid. "Your mother gave me this after I babysat you one day. You probably don't remember it—you were only three and after that you two moved to New Jersey and we didn't have much contact. But I always kept it and I brought it to show to you today."

Though the Polaroid was slightly yellow with age, Macy could clearly see the two people shown in the image. Kendra, looking maybe a little older than Annabelle did now, was curled up on the couch with a young girl about Chelsea's age with curly brown hair. Macy laughed when she saw that the two of them were a little worse for the wear, with cookie dough in their hair and paint on their clothes.

"You didn't exactly make a baby powder storm, but you were certainly just as difficult as my girls," Kendra said.

Annabelle came back from the bathroom with Chelsea and saw the two women huddled over the old photograph. "What's that?"

Before Macy or Kendra could reply, Chelsea shot across the room and grabbed ahold of Kendra's leg. "Auntie Kendra! Guess what I found out?! I did it all by myself—I didn't have any help from Uncle Nicky at all!"

Kendra smiled at the little girl and pulled her onto her lap. "What did you find out, sweetheart?"

"Today is yesterday's tomorrow!" said the five-year-old with a smug little grin. Kendra gaped for a moment before she laughed and gave the little girl a hug.

"I suppose it is!" she said.

Macy looked down at the photograph in her hand for another moment before she handed it to Annabelle with a smile.

(end)

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a/n: I feel I could have done a bit more with the end, but I wanted to get this finished in time for Mother's Day, so let's just say that this will be taken in for edits the moment I've got time. This is largely inspired by Kendra's own _Naptime_ series and Annabelle and Ellie are modeled after her own beautiful girls. I don't know why, but this idea of cycles and circuity has been running in my head for quite some time. Oh, and little Chelsea's revelation was one I came to myself and shared with my own babysitter at the tender age of four. And, yeah, "Uncle Nicky" probably managed to turn it into a song.

Here's a Happy Mother's Day wish for Kendra. I hope it went better than you were expecting. :)

Love,  
Beth.


End file.
